I met up with The Doll at a transit stop and we hugged hello – and when we parted to start walking to the restaurant, he just kind of…caught hold of my hand. Clumsily, like with a couple of random fingers of mine ensnared by a couple of his fingers, but yeah. It was nice, but felt backwards to me – hand-holding seems like something you do after you’re at the makeout point with someone. It also seems like something very couple-y, so although I enjoyed the closeness I got a bit deer-in-headlights and didn’t rearrange our hands into a more full-contact grip or anything. I just let us keep walking with linked claws.

Dinner was nice. At one point we actually got deeper than just small talk or discussions of our kinks – he asked me to tell him a bit about my family/upbringing* and then told me about his, including some sad stuff like how he and his brother love each other but really don’t get along very well. I really, really liked having a conversation that went below the surface a bit. Before that he’d been mostly polite-but-reserved and so I followed his lead – but worried that the first time I expressed negative feelings it would come as some horrible surprise. I know he likes my more superficial qualities – my appearance, my intellect, my sense of humour – but I’m concerned that he might fill in the stuff he doesn’t know with a bunch of fantasies. I want to make sure he likes me and not the person he hopes I am. Broaching my dysfunctional childhood is a good start, and it didn’t seem to turn him off.

The Doll mentioned in passing before that met a fellow rubber fetishist a while back and ended up going all the way to New York City to hang out with him – and the two of them played. I followed up on this tonight, asking what exactly they did and whether The Doll’s enjoyment of it stemmed from the guy himself or solely from the fact that rubber was involved. (In other words, does The Doll have bisexual leanings or is he just really into rubber and his play partner is merely a prop that helps him indulge this?). The Doll said that he enjoys playing with guys as long as at least one person in the scene is feminized. Doesn’t matter if it’s The Doll, his partner, or both, but someone’s got to be girl-looking. And there has to be fetishwear involved.

During this conversation, The Doll mentioned that the main thing that attracts him to someone physically is femininity. I felt a little twinge when he said that, but quickly realized that his tone was absolutely straightforward – it wasn’t a neg hit. In fact his demeanour suggested that I’d probably already guessed this about him since he’s attracted to me.

Just for context, let me just say that a few years back I had a few dates with a cute crossdresser I met on Plenty of Fish. My very first message to this guy clearly stated that I’m not very girly myself (i.e. I have short hair, don’t wear heels or pantyhose or lingerie, rarely wear skirts, etc.) but would love to be the butch to his femme. He said he was into that, but once we’d gone out a couple of times he started dropping a bunch of insidious little hints, trying to manipulate me into being more femme. He even told me he’d felt slightly disappointed when he’d first met me in person because he “thought I’d be more feminine” which pissed me off because a) I fucking told him the deal right up front and b) yes, fine, I mostly wear jeans and t-shirts, but they’re a girly/fitted cut and I have quite the hourglassy figure. Seriously: bodywise, I am feminine as fuck. The way I move, the way I talk, most of my hobbies, even the shape of my shaved head – it all screams “girl.” And yet this asshole was acting like I was Ernest Borgnine-manly simply because I prefer lower-body garments with individual leg-tubes instead of one big tube that goes around both. I dumped him quickly.

Oh, also, for about the first twenty years of my life it seemed like every adult man I knew (and, later, every guy I dated) wanted to physically overpower me. I suspected that my height made people think of me as a boy, and that’s why other girls got treated with kid gloves and I didn’t. This theory seemed to be confirmed when I was eighteen and dated a guy who would (for instance) twist my arm behind my back until I screamed – one day I asked him why he did shit like that to me and he shrugged and said “you’re big. You look like you can take it.**”

Fast forward to tonight, with The Doll talking about how femininity is hot and automatically including me in that category, even with my shaved head and jeans and men’s oxfords. It’s embarrassing how flattered – how snivellingly grateful – this made me feel (though I didn’t let on). It makes me realize just how tangled my relationship to gender actually is; I always knew I’m genderqueer at least partly out of an internalized hatred of women, but I guess I also identify this way because it seemed like nobody saw me as female anyway so I might as well embrace being a dude.*** I would never have thought that being thought of as “feminine” would feel validating to me, but it kind of does.

Anyway.

Awkwardness ahoy: after our meal, when the waitress asked if we wanted separate bills, I automatically said no, all together would be fine. I always worry that separate bills makes more work for the server. So she brought back our consolidated bill and The Doll made no move for his wallet (I think he wasn’t sure what the etiquette was and was waiting for a hint) and I didn’t want to say “Oh, yeah, sorry, I still want us each to pay for our own food” so I just paid for both of us. He paid for both of us last time, mind you, but he has a full-time job and that other outing was way cheaper than this one, I’m just saying. I hope this doesn’t set a precedent of taking turns paying because I hate that. If I’m paying for just me, I can control what I spend. I would imagine it’s impolite to take someone else to dinner and be like “Yo, you don’t need a beverage. Just have water. And you’d better not be hoping for dessert, either!”

We kept sitting there talking for a long while after the bill was paid, and then I suggested that I walk him home. There was no hand-holding, just the two of us plodding along side-by side, talking about movies we’d seen and liked. When we got to his door, The Doll asked if I wanted to come in for a bit; I hadn’t intended to go inside when I first offered to walk him home (visiting him had not been part of our original game plan and it’s not nice to spring it on someone), but I hadn’t brought a hat and the walk had frozen my ears to the point of pain, and he did offer, so I said it would be nice to come in and thaw a bit.

The Doll showed me a latex dress he’d bought recently – showed me by holding it up to himself, not by putting it on, which I liked (it’s nice that he’s not pushing his kink on me – we talk about latex, but we also talk about other things, and clearly he’s not scurrying off to change into something rubber the first second we’re in private). Turns out the same day he bought the dress, he also bought a laser-cut, butterfly-shaped latex mask…for me, because I said I was curious about latex but don’t like to wear skimpy or constrictive things.

He ushered me into his bathroom so I could try it on in front of the mirror. Honestly, I think the eyeholes on this thing are a bit too close together for my face (I can see the edges in my peripheral vision), and I’m not sure when I’d wear it…but it’s genuinely touching that he bought me a gift (especially one based on something I’d said!) so I hugged him. And The Doll started kissing my neck (which, again, seems backwards…apparently I believe that the first romantic/intimate touch between two people should be lip contact. Period. Also, when a guy starts at my neck I feel like he’s too chicken to kiss me on the lips outright and is trying to sneak up to my mouth sideways instead, and the passive-aggression of it kind of irritates me. I realize this thought process is probably weird.)

So there was a while where I was kind of trying to maneuver him around to get to his mouth, but I didn’t want to be too obvious about it and he was too buried in my neck to respond to my subtle cues. Eventually our lips met, though, and yeah. Our first makeout session was in The Doll’s bathroom. I am classy as fuck. 😀

The Doll is not a spectacular kisser. Or maybe his lips are just not a shape that feels good to me. At any rate, it was one of those situations where the kissing isn’t great but it doesn’t feel fixable, like I don’t know what direction I could even give. He was excellent at following my lead (as I’ve mentioned before, I tend to alternate between gentle and aggressive when I kiss. Some guys try to bridge the distance when I pull back, and I don’t like it; my intent is to tease). And he was very vocal, making soft moans almost the moment we embraced and whimpering (happily) when I grabbed a fistful of his hair. It was remarkable, actually, how completely mine he seemed when I got aggressive. Y’know the feeling of catching a baseball, having it thump solidly into the palm of your hand like it belongs there? That’s what it felt like. The Doll was just…totally, totally in the palm of my hand, metaphorically speaking, the second I assumed control (is this what subspace is?). And despite the somewhat limp, overly slippery kisses, I felt the beast inside me begin to waken. Or, okay, I suppose if I want to start owning these feelings I should say what I mean outright: I got progressively more turned on and it made me want to beat the shit out of him. Not because I disliked him for turning me on. Just because arousal makes me Hulk the fuck out lately.

The violence I feel frightens me a little bit. Perhaps more to the point, I worry a lot that if a partner finds out about my violent streak he’ll stop trusting me, even if I never do anything inappropriate at all (GEE THANKS MINX). For these reasons – and also because I didn’t want to end up naked or having sex tonight – I would frequently take breaks from the kissing, leaning my head against The Doll’s forehead or shoulder, growling and gripping his shoulders hard in my hands as I waited for my feelings to subside.

And The Doll…was literally shaking. Not with fear or anything negative like that. I think the makeouts just gave us both a lot of feelings to process – both physical and emotional – and neither of us quite knew how to deal with it.

I love how communicative he is. He told me, unbidden, that he liked when I pulled his hair. When I was in the process of reducing him to a shivering mess, he smiled at me and said “Jeez, I’m shaking” instead of trying to ignore or hide it. When I touched a place on his side that got a weird reaction and I asked if everything was okay, he explained to me, without self-consciousness, that he’s ticklish there but it’s not necessarily unpleasant, especially if I move my hands slowly instead of being grabby or sudden. This is a boy who knows what he likes and can explain it eloquently. And at one point he asked if he was pleasing me and when I said yes, he asked, “How can I please you more?” Which I really, really liked (I couldn’t think of an answer, but shortly after that his fingers found a place on my neck that made me gasp and I was like “Yes, that. More, please” and he stroked all around my neck and collarbones and fireworks exploded in my skin and the world melted away until nothing existed but his fingertips RAWR).

Not only is this boy communicative, he’s effusive. More than once he gasped out “You’re so beautiful – ” or told me he wanted to please me. On several occasions he said “thank you” in this astoundingly grateful and desperate tone of voice that would probably have made my clitoris explode if I hadn’t been in a somewhat guarded mode (shields up because he’s new; sexual thoughts pushed to the back of my mind because I’m dominating him and need to focus on “driving the bus,” as it were). The first time he thanked me I asked “for what?” and all he said was “this…just feels really good.” He may have been referring to the makeouts themselves but I think he actually meant that the dynamic felt good – that baseball-slapping-into-the-glove compatibility of dom and sub. I know we were both feeling it. I assume it’s what he was thanking me for all the other times that he gasped out a “thank you,” too. 😀

After I don’t know how long, the makeouts wound to a stop of their own accord and we managed to compose ourselves a bit, although by that time we were both shaking. Just standing there flushed and breathless and grinning at each other like idiots. I asked him for the tenth time whether everything was okay – whether my level of roughness was acceptable – and he assured me that it was good, and that I could go further/harder if I wanted to. I tried to explain to him how conflicted I feel and how scared I am of freaking someone out. I’m not sure I explained it well. I hope he understands at least a little bit, and can be patient with me. I’d really like to tell him specifically about the ways Minx fucked me up in this regard but I feel it might be a breach of dating etiquette (or at least make me look like a bitter old crone) to open up that can of worms so early.

The Doll got me a glass of water and we chatted a bit more about random stuff and just generally cooled down for a while. At one point (I can’t remember what came before; probably I’d asked for confirmation that he really did feel comfortable going further with things BDSM-wise), he said “Well, isn’t that why anyone enters into a relationship? To grow and explore?” I hope this doesn’t mean that he considers us to be in a romantic relationship. I should probably get the whole poly thing out in the open soon, just in case.

Okay, I feel like I’m ending this post on a weird note but I’m so tired I’m practically falling asleep on my keyboard and nothing much else happened tonight anyway. Goodnight!

*Possibly the first time he’s ever asked me anything – he doesn’t come off like an egotistical bastard or monopolize our conversations or anything but generally when there’s a silence to fill, his first instinct is to talk about himself, or about some interesting thing he read on the internet. I liked that he expressed curiosity about me. I hope he does it more often.

**Seems obvious now that the guy was an abusive asshole making up excuses. Back then, though, I took him at his word and believed that I was somehow asking to be hurt just by looking the way that I do. It’s a lot to deal with.

***And, okay, also I have really sensitive skin so restrictive or oddly-textured clothing drives me insane. It’s getting worse as I get older. I don’t think you could pay me to put on a pair of pantyhose anymore.

For what it’s worth, I’m super-shy about kissing someone on the lips precisely because I’m worried about being a bad kisser. For various reasons, the path my life has taken has never involved being in a relationship that involved both kissing AND a level of trust and comfort with my partner to the point where it’d be appropriate for them to critique me on my kissing skills. So I tend to go for people’s necks/jawlines/shoulders/whatever because I feel like there’s a lot less skill involved there. If I had my way, mouth-kissing would be saved exclusively for when/if I was in another serious, long-term relationship (or at least for a well-established d/s scene) where it would be appropriate for my partner to give me a full report on what the hell I was doing. Not to say that this is The Doll’s thought process at all; just to say that he’s not necessarily a passive-aggressive asshole 😀 People have all kindsa weird issues.

I don’t think he’s actually passive-aggressive or an asshole. In fact I assumed he was simply nervous and didn’t want to make too aggressive of a move, and I generally find that endearing in a guy, so it was strange to me that I was feeling so disturbed and almost angry about it.

But I’ve just realized: this is generally how guys have started sexually assaulting me (guys I thought were my friends have done this to me on at least three different occasions). It’s like “Oh, good, she’s asleep/not paying attention. I’m gonna creep up on her and start kissing her neck so lightly that she might not even notice…and by the time she does, it’ll have been going on for so long that she’ll feel obligated to let it continue so as not to have ‘led me on’!”

So yeah. Not a fan of Ye Olde Sneak Attack.

Re: a kissing critique: can you ask a friend to critique you? If you’re not in love or even a relationship then there won’t be so much at stake.

See also: guys I danced with in nightclubs or went on dates with, but did not end up wanting to kiss (and when it looked like they were going to initiate stuff, I stood up tall and twisted my head so they couldn’t get to my mouth) – and they’d ignore my blatantly disinterested body language and just start slobbering on my neck instead.